UN-Brokered Deal May Speed Syria’s Disintegration

While the ongoing civil war means any formal partition is likely many years off, the recent UN-brokered ceasefire and transfer agreement in certain parts of Syria, centering on government-held territory and parts of al-Qaeda’s Idlib Province, seems to be speeding the sectarian separation of the country.

The truce in question set the stage for a deal on significant population transfers, allowing the Syrian government to withdraw Shi’ite villagers from areas no longer defensible deeper into their own territory, while al-Qaeda was allowed to move forces out of Zabadani, deep in Syrian government territory, back toward their own power base.

The transfer both frees up the Syrian military to more successfully defend their territory, and for al-Qaeda to do the same in Idlib without worrying about a smaller force in Zabadani getting outright surrounded, and seems to be strengthening the status quo between the two.

Similar transfers, less organized, have been going on in ISIS-held territory for months, as ISIS advances inevitably lead to an exodus of non-Sunnis from a territory, while occasions where ISIS has lost territory to Kurdish forces has similarly seen the Sunni Arabs fleeing deeper into ISIS territory. As the war continues, it seems increasingly to be boiling down to a de facto split along several different lines, with less and less chance of any side “winning” the war outright. The question may simply be how long they will continue to throw troops at one another until they are resigned to a stalemate and settlement.

6 thoughts on “UN-Brokered Deal May Speed Syria’s Disintegration”

Where in UN charter doe it give the rights to aid worlds largest military forces in the dissolutiln of nations, and then arbirarily set borders of ( As in Kosovo) brand new nations?

The UN and the Pope now want to set up model communitys within already existing metro city limits, it is call Gentrification but in actual practice is both. Genocidal and elitism to its highest degree of hubris.

Led , staffed and upper income people who never had a productive. Jod in their lives, euro and US upper middle class educated in pure bullshit because it gives them power and they can legally look condencendingly upon any who ask where will be the place for free will.

They answer; “We will provide you with plenty of outlets to express our will of the whole.”

By dividing people on bases of religious, national or language you simply dividing people rather then uniting them where as result the animosity between them will remain, Yugoslavia is the example of such policies, but then again, from the very beginning the idea was for people in Syria, Iraq, Libya to be divided while the French intelligent officer deliberately would murder Kaddafi preventing him to tell the truth if he were going to be prosecuted at international court of law. The western democracy works like an old mafia family, you won't pay us what we demand you to pay we will kill you and your family, Nicolas Sarkozi, David Cameton, Angela Markel, the Italian Mafiosi and that Swedish King know what I am talking about.

Some twenty years ago, the neocons drew up a war plan. Their targets were Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Hamas is confined to a concentration camp called Gaza. It is surrounded by Israel and Egypt and is squeezed when it pleases them. Saddam Hussein's Iraq is no more. The country itself does not exist except on political maps or in mouths of politicians. It should not have come as a surprise to any REAL intelligence agency that Saddam's forces would make up large proportion of ISIS. A war with Hezbollah was a bloody affair, and one that Hezbollah would not welcome again. If Asad falls, they know that they will be the next target in a renewed civil war in Lebanon. Syria's role as an ally of Iran made it the target of opportunity when religious zealots rose in revolt. Just like Iraq, Syria is a fictious representation on political maps. As Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia armed and funded the rebellion, with US and NATO blessings, the civil war has dragged on with the result that thousands of civilians have died and tens of thousands have been displaced or fled. The deal that has just been reached with Iran is under attack. The neocons are still pulling the strings on overturning the deal and seeking a hot war with Tehran. The only winner in all this mess are the neocons. They got what they planned for.

The problem with partition is that the conflict is no longer just a Syrian civil war. ISIS has entered the fray, the Kurds are in it, which in its turn brings the Turks in. Because all this is on Israel's border, it's now involved and ties the US down as well. And now Putin has got involved. The Israelis want to keep ISIS away from their borders, so they might want an anti-Assad rump state in the south-west, around Damascus, but that would be perceived as an Israeli puppet. Putin might want an Alawite rump state around his precious naval base, but that would be perceived as a Russian puppet. I don't see ISIS allowing "infidel" puppet states to be created in the Middle East. And that's to say nothing of the Kurds, who want a Kurdish state, which the Turks are determined to prevent. Thus,ceasefires may be useful in stopping the flood of refugees but I don't see partition as a workable, long-term solution. So it will just be the Palestinina problem writ large.